1. Technical Field
The invention relates to the field of application integration, and more particularly, to the generation of components for integrating different enterprise level applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems typically are multi-module software applications which help organizations manage diverse aspects of their business such as product planning, parts purchasing, maintaining inventories, interacting with suppliers, providing customer service, and tracking orders. ERP systems further can manage financial and human resource aspects of a business. For example, Systems, Application and Products in Data Processing (SAP), AG of Walldorf Germany provides a comprehensive set of integrated business applications known as mySAP.com™.
Conventional ERP systems have begun incorporating extensible markup language (XML) functionality in an effort to facilitate information exchange with other disparate ERP systems and applications. In consequence, XML documents can be used to interface ERP systems such as mySAP.com with middleware messaging systems and applications. Although XML can provide a robust platform for interaction among disparate applications and systems, conventional ERP system manufacturers typically utilize proprietary XML message formats within their ERP systems which are not common to other ERP systems. In consequence, a middleware messaging system often must translate one proprietary ERP system message format, whether XML or not, to another proprietary ERP system message format. Further, the middleware messaging system often must translate the proprietary XML message format into an intermediate format used by the middleware itself.
For example, MQSeries™ is a middleware business integration software package available from International Business Machines Corporation of Armonk, N.Y. MQSeries can mediate between different ERP systems or applications. Through its various software components, MQSeries can provide a communication mechanism between applications on different platforms, centralized application of business operations rules, and workflow management enabling the capture, visualization, and automation of business processes.
Middleware systems utilize software components referred to as adapters for converting one form of XML to another. Products such as IBM's MQSeries Adapter Builder can generate these adapters. To generate such an adapter, a document type definition (DTD) describing the particular interface to the ERP system must be imported into the adapter generation tool. Many ERP systems, however, provide only a generic description of the structure of XML documents used to interact with the ERP system. Such ERP systems do not describe specific interfaces, nor do the ERP systems provide DTDs which are associated with specific interfaces. For example, the SAP provided interfaces include only XML runtime formats.
In consequence, the DTD must be manually generated so that it can be imported into the adapter builder tool. The manual creation of a DTD, however, introduces the possibility of human error into the creation of adapters. Additionally, the manual nature of DTD creation requires additional time not only for creating the DTDs and adapters, but also for future modifications of the DTDs and adapters.